Want to know what Prescott College students are thinking, doing, embrace, and love about our school?

Search This Blog

Monday, April 13, 2009

Easter

Easter.

Listen, guys. I know. I know, I know that Prescott College is not in to religion. We're into Spirituality. Sometimes. And we are so definitely not into Christianity.Neither am I. Not in the strictest sense.But I love the story of resurrection.

Radical.

I love ceremony, I love that feeling you get with 200 people in the same room thinking similar thoughts, focused, on love of other people, love of the dead, love of that feeling. I've been thinking about ceremony a lot.I read this page, about one of the Latino cultural centers in Dallas (my home): http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/ArtSpaces/IceHouse/new/TheVirginPage.shtml

The show is all of images of La Virgen de Guadalupe. That art critic is annoyed with repetition. He wrote: "As we drove up, we noticed three male Hispanic* artists rendering Frida, Diego, a Super Lucha and somebody I didn't recognize, super realistically in lush, dark mural colors on the front wall.

I was dismayed by the un-original images and forms portraying America's most original and individualist artist couple ever. The irony was weightily whelming, and I tried to escape inside the building, but Kathy lingered long out there, insisting I come watch what I'd already seen too much of.

Inside, we were seriously un-awed and actively annoyed by the tedious exhibition of me-too copies in differing colors but few different concepts lost in a hopelessly PC, taste-free zone. Kathy worried aloud about the nightmares she expected next time she'd try to sleep. It was, she said later, "the stuff of bad dreams."

We do that. I do that. It's not just tourists who shop for luchadores paraphernalia, Frida prints, the same dia de los muertos figures every year. My mama is obsessed with milagros, which are the same images, in a thousand tiny silver incarnations. Pressed hands, legs, arms, breasts, flowers, boots, eyes, hearts. I love these things. I love that they are all incarnations of the same idea. We love those ideas. I love the idea of the ideas.

Those art critics see that as unoriginal. Typecasting artists into limiting stereotypes. Maybe we should make art that isn't about Guadalupe, Diego, and Santo? I joke all the time, anything that I cook is Mexican food because I'm Mexican. But that doesn't ring true, does it?I think this art is ceremonial. It is an affirmation that we love who we are, and we love our culture.

I have 4 images of Guadalupe in my room here in Arizona, and I didn't have any at home in Texas. I didn't need to. In the absence of my family, and of the neighborhood, and of the music everywhere around me, I have these little statues and pictures instead. They make it easier for me to sleep. Cheesey as they are to high art, they make where I'm from part of where I am. Putting them in my room was itself a ceremony, each time.

Ceremony is a way of making emotional, mental, and spiritual things physical. That's what I see in this art, and that's what I get out of mass. It's not even that ceremony is beautiful...it's that it's necessary.

Easter is this weekend. I am searching for things to do. Prescott College is far from religious, and I think in most other places, I would describe myself the same way. Here though, I miss my family with an intensity that itself is nearly religious. It is transformative! I lament my diet, I chastise myself for not making my own tortillas. Insignificant and distant memories take on so much more weight, and I want to listen to nothing but Rancheras alllll day. I want to cry. Something so stupid, like wearing my hair back and out of my make-up-laden face is now worthy of Vincente Fernandez soundtrack and despair! What's up with that?!

In sum, I have decided to buy a nice white dress and go to mass tomorrow, things I haven't done at home in years and years. In my beautiful mexicana family's absence, I am everything they want me to be. Except there with them.

*I hate this word, and I never use it to describe myself. It's the critic's word. Write me sometime, and I will explain in copious detail why.

PS. I watch that movie, Frida, nearly religiously, too. For exactly the same reasons.

Links We Love

Matt Seats

Competence: Wilderness Leadership (Adventure Education)Breadth: Environmental Studies (Land Management Policy)Favorite Place: I really enjoy Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, but Rum Point in Grand Cayman and the jungles and cloud forests in the Chiriqui region of Panama are pretty amazing too!On My Days Off I Like To: Rock climb, write, bike, hike, kayak and otherwise spend time outdoors.After I Graduate: I hope to split my time between teaching/instructing in the field, working on land management policy research and issues at the Bureau of Land Management (or other land management agency), and guiding international expeditions.

Amanda August

Competence: Human Development

Breadth: Cultural and Regional Studies; Adventure Education

My Favorite Place: Recently I traveled to Seattle and Rainier Nat'l Park and absolutely loved it. I also worked in the Sierra Nevadas last year and can't wait to get back this coming summer and explore more!

On My Days Off I Like To: Hiking/Climbing/Cycling, Check out what's new at the Picture Show, Tinker with projects, Letterboxing, Traveling with friends.

After I Graduate: Continue on to get my Masters, working in Non Profits serving under served Youth, invoking systemic change while promoting experiential education as a basic academic necessity. Canoe the Yukon. Travel South America. Open a brewery. You know, do it all.

Hannah Jean Marshall

Competence: A double competence in Wilderness Leadership with an emphasis in Gender studies, and The Political Economy and Social Justice Favorite place: Where ever I find my adventureOn My Saturdays Off I Like To: See what the day brings...

After I Graduate: I will be a rock star

Ruby Teegarden

Competence: Environmental PolicyBreadth: Music EducationFavorite Place: San Francisco/BerkeleyOn my Saturdays off I like to Read, be in the sun, cook yummy foodAfter I graduate I plan on making our food systems more sustainable, among other things.